


Conspire to Ignite

by objectlesson



Category: Battlestar Galactica (1978)
Genre: Casual Sex, M/M, Pre-Series, bro-jobs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-03
Updated: 2015-07-03
Packaged: 2018-04-07 09:35:31
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,195
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4258410
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/objectlesson/pseuds/objectlesson
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Starbuck offers Apollo a casual blow job that ends up being not so casual after all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Conspire to Ignite

**Author's Note:**

> I finally finished the series, and absolutely loved it in all its absurdity. Love these characters, love their relationship, love that BSG ended with Starbuck and Apollo alone in the Hand of God together. Here's a story about them being cute post academy and pre-destruction of the colonies…It might actually be the sappiest thing I have EVER written.

conspire to ignite 

After a few chess matches and a few more shots of Ambrosa, the subject of fracking comes up amid laughter, messy and easy like something spilled. They’re in Apollo’s quarters, sitting at his bare regulation table adjacent the bed, Apollo leaning back in his chair and Starbuck with his feet kicked up beside the chessboard, boots crossed. 

“How many girls? Lords, I dunno,” he says, voice coming out strained around his cigar. “Loads; would sure be easier to name the guys, haven’t fooled around with half as many guys.” 

Apollo chokes on his mouthful of ambrosa, sputtering onto his chin, eyes wide and stunned. Starbuck watches him wipe off his jaw with the sleeve of his jacket, the shape of his lips crushed and dripping amber. Starbuck grins. He knew talking about this would send Apollo for a loop; he loves saying things that make Apollo uncomfortable, he loves pushing and pulling him in any number of directions, getting under his skin. He supposes it is the side effect of wanting to frack your best friend, but knowing better. Something’s gotta give. 

“You’ve fracked guys? How come you never told me?” Apollo accuses, recovering, but only just. There is still color on his cheeks, still a stunned arch to his brows, and he leans across the table eagerly, like he wants details. 

Starbuck shrugs nonchalantly, puffing on his cigar. “You never asked.” 

Apollo regards him incredulously and pours himself another drink, eyes narrowed. “Well, now I am. How many guys have you fracked?” 

Starbuck pretends to think long and hard about this question even though he knows the answer. He may play the part of someone who sleeps around so much he doesn’t remember half the people he beds with, but the truth is that he does remember, more than he’d like to. He remembers names, he remembers circumstances, he remembers if he felt awful or empty afterwards, if it was good, forgettable, mind blowing. He remembers whether or not he thought about Apollo before, during, or after. He remembers it all; it’s kind of a curse. “Ehhh...around ten?” 

“Ten?!” Apollo says, eyes so wide and stricken and green, like he can’t even conceal even a fraction of his shock. “And do you like it? Are you into it?” He wrinkles his nose, head cocked and hands spinning his shot-glass in a circle on the table top, nervous and compulsive. 

“Of course!” Starbuck scoffs. “I don’t frack people I’m not into. You could say I prefer the ladies, but I’m not one to turn away a nice looking cock,” he says, smiling sharp and feral, gesturing with his cigar between two fingers. 

The word _cock_ makes Apollo spit ambrosa again, and seeing him all red-faced and coughing over it makes Starbuck’s own cock twitch, makes his eyes trail down the flickering tendons in his throat and sigh a little. He’s wanted Apollo for enough yahrens that it’s become the kind of slow, constant burn that resides in the pit of his gut, doesn’t interfere with his ability to share space with him, be close to him. Which is not to say certain things don’t ignite it, feed it so its raging and blazing, as it is now. But it’s something he’s learned to live with, a fire he’s learned to contain. Starbuck swallows, and takes a drag from his cigar. 

Apollo shakes his head, staring hard at Starbuck, flint in his gaze. The green of his eyes is a terrible thing, pale and reflective and it reminds Starbuck of things like lichen, like ivy in the morning, dusted in dew and shining under dawn light. He’s kind of a masochist, so he doesn’t turn away. 

“Lords of Cobol, Starbuck. You like cock. You like--”Apollo cuts himself off, rubbing his mouth with his fingers, like it silences him to imagine his best and oldest friend doing unspeakable things with a man, even though he’s had to hear countless details about all the things he does with women. 

“Sucking cock, yeah. Love it,” Starbuck interjects, putting words in Apollo’s mouth if he can’t put other things in there. “Captain Apollo, I thought you were the progressive, understanding sort, and here you are--”

“Hey, stop,” Apollo says, reaching across the divide between their bodies and shoving Starbuck playfully on the shoulder. It’s a thing he’s done millions of times before, but the context makes the touch seem heavy, loaded, and Starbuck’s heart thuds at the contact, a weird, pleading kind of feeling expanding in his solar plexus. Apollo rocks back onto his chair, thighs straddling the seat as he leans forward with this look of unguarded fascination on his face. “I’m not judging you, I just can’t believe I didn’t _know,_ that you never told me.”

“Huh,” Starbuck says, shrugging. “I guess you shouldn’t assume you know everything about a guy, even your wingman,” he offers, nodding to Apollo. He stops his gaze from crawling over his body as it often does, something he was always able to get away with in the past because Apollo never suspected he might have ulterior motives. But now, he wonders if he’s obvious, if the way he looks at Apollo will seem blatant, invasive, clear in its intent. After all, the air seems tight between them, crackling with something unforeseen, and Starbuck half regrets revealing what he revealed. 

“So,” Apollo says, clearing his throat. “You like sucking cock.” 

“No, I said I _loved_ it. There’s a difference,” he says smugly. 

Apollo has an unreadable look on his face, and he regards Starbuck carefully, half-obscured in cigar smoke, eyes twinkling. “Ok, you love it. What do you love about it?” 

Starbuck’s stomach drops again, kind of annoyed Apollo can _do_ that to him _still_ , make him feel like a rookie trying to land a viper, shaky and sick and thrilled. He swallows thickly, stares into the bottom of his shot glass where there is still a half inch or so of bootleg ambrosa, cloudy and amber. “You know, same stuff we both love about going down on girls. If you can remember what that’s like, I know it’s been yahrens for you...”

“Ha Ha,” Apollo snaps, rolling his eyes. “Just because it isn’t every _weekend_.”

Starbuck holds his hands up in mock surrender. “Just calling it how I see it, Captain. Anyway. Sucking cock isn’t all that different ...it’s hot and tastes good--”

“It _tastes good_?” Apollo asks, like he can’t believe it. 

“Yes, it _tastes good_ , if he’s had a shower sometime in the _recent past_ , same as a girl, though I do like em’ sweaty after a triad match or something,” Starbuck snaps, swigging down the last of his ambrosa. It burns down his throat, makes his eyes water, and he coughs. 

“Wow,” Apollo says solemnly, cheeks flushed. Then he gets quiet. 

The air thrums and crackles between them, alive and stinging with smoke, and Starbuck risks looking at Apollo, really looking at him, eyes roving over his entirety for a second so he can try and read his body language, access exactly what direction this conversation is taking, figure out _why_ Apollo seems so gods damned _interested_ in Starbuck’s extracurriculars all of the sudden. Then, he sees it. Between Apollo’s splayed thighs, the distinct outline of a half-hard cock. His mouth goes dry. 

“Are you getting _hard?!_ ” He barks, sitting up abruptly and nudging Apollo’s shin roughly with the toe of his boot.

“No!” Apollo lies, flushing a fierce crimson, and there is the real answer to Starbuck’s question. His stomach tightens up and he puts his cigar out in his empty shot glass with newly shaking hands, shifting around in his chair so that he’s facing Apollo, studying him abashedly now even though Apollo has closed his thighs and is trying to laugh his way out of the grave he dug and laid in. 

“Hey now, don’t be ashamed. It’s a normal, natural, healthy thing for a growing boy in your position,” Starbuck jokes even though he doesn’t trust himself to act convincingly normal right now. He reaches for Apollo’s elbow, only to get shrugged off. His heart his racing, speeding towards all the potential things it could mean that it gave Apollo a hard on to hear Starbuck talk about blow jobs, all the potential outcomes he shouldn’t entertain, but is entertaining anyway. 

“Frack,” Apollo mumbles, pulling his arm from Starbuck’s still searching grip. “You’re terrible, you know that?” 

“Course I do,” Starbuck answers, wanting to badly to lick into the heat of Apollo’s flush, to chase it down the muscles in his neck with his teeth. He tries so hard not to let himself fantasize about these things until he’s alone on most days, but he’s letting his mind charge on, letting himself imagine the way Apollo would look all sweat-shiny and heaving under him. “Hey,” he says firmly, bracing one hand on the table, fisting the other in Apollo’s collar and forcing him to meet his eyes. Apollo glares at him, jaw set tight, and Starbuck thinks, _what if?_ This is as far as he’s ever made it on this front, the only flicker of possibility he’s ever see in regards to getting more of Apollo than he already has. “You want me to?” He asks, voice lower and thicker than he means for it to be. 

Apollo studies his face intently for proof that he’s serious , hot breath coming out in labored gasps, burning with ambrosa, the blue-green of his eyes nearly edged out to nothingness with pupil. He swallows, throat clicking, and Starbuck has to hold himself back from licking at the twitching corner of his mouth, he’s got it so bad. “What, suck me off?” He says eventually, brows drawn together tightly. 

“Yeah,” Starbuck answers. “Because I will.” 

“Will it make things weird?” Apollo asks him, shifting almost imperceptibly closer, thighs falling apart again and Starbuck think’s he _must_ be able to hear his heartbeat, he must be able to hear its frantic thud. 

Starbuck’s gaze flicks down between Apollo’s legs, back to the unmistakable, mouth watering thickness of him pressing insistently into the seam of his uniform khakis. He shrugs, chances a wild grin at Apollo, one full of teeth. His smile has gotten him plenty of things before. “Not if you don’t let it. It’s just a blow job.” 

“Frack,” Apollo sighs, letting his head fall back, exposing the perfect, bronze ripple of his throat to Starbuck’s itching teeth. “Yeah. Okay. Fine.” 

Starbuck can’t believe it. He laughs a little, just to shatter the tight stretch of space between them, just to make it seem like this whole thing is funny to him, cool, one of the ten or so cocks he’s sucked in his lifetime that Apollo didn’t know about. He licks his lips, sliding off his chair and sinking to his knees between Apollo’s powerful thighs, the muscle of them twitching beneath his palms as he steadies himself. 

He has jacked himself off to this exact image countless times, Apollo spread out before him, the front of his regulation slacks tented and damp with precum, glorious and awful and forbidden and the worst fracking idea in the world. Starbuck watches as Apollo unbuckles his belt hesitantly, eyes downcast as he pulls out his cock and palms it to its full thickness. He’s unreasonably big, unreasonably perfect, and Starbuck has to choke back an embarrassing sound from where he’s sitting on the floor. He can’t wait anymore; he pushes Apollo’s hands away and swallows the steel-hard heat of him whole. 

Apollo groans wordlessly, involuntarily, a ripped and vulnerable sound Starbuck was _sure_ he didn’t mean to make. It drives straight into Starbuck’s gut, sharp and pure. Apollo fills him up, huge and searing under his tongue, the skin so hot and salty it makes Starbuck’s eyes water. It’s been awhile since he had cock in his mouth and he doesn’t remember it being so good, so heady and musky and mouth splitting, he doesn’t remember feeling like he could die happy, but that’s what he’s thinking now. 

He takes his time, savoring the weight and feel of Apollo’s cock, lashing his tongue across the flared part of the crown, placing wet, open mouthed kisses all over the underside, mouthing down to his balls and sucking there, too. 

“Frack,” Apollo keeps saying, twitching in the loose hand Starbuck has wrapped around the base of him, abdominal muscles gathering and spasming as he bucks lazily into his mouth. “Frack.” 

Starbuck looks up at him with wide, imploring eyes, still only half-believing this is happening to him. In all the times he ever let himself think about this, he imagined Apollo would keep his eyes shut through the whole thing, like half the other straight guys Starbuck has blown. But now that it’s happening, his stomach is sick and roiling around the reality, which is that Apollo is _staring_ at him, his eyes narrowed in awed scrutiny while his head lolls on his own shoulder, gaze rapt like he’s _fascinated_ by the way Starbuck looks on his knees. It tightens all the knots in Starbuck’s insides, makes his stomach drop over and over again to know Apollo is studying every little thing he’s doing to him. 

“Does it taste bad?” Apollo murmurs curiously, one hand gripping on the edge of the table, the other on the seat of his chair. 

Starbuck slides off him slow and lazy. “No,” he answers, lips ghosting across the leaking slit before he tongues into it. Apollo hisses at him, air escaping his clenched jaw. “You taste so fracking good,” Starbuck mumbles before sliding back down the shaft, so deep his lips brush into the humid thatch of hair there, and everything smells so sweat-damp and husky and perfect he’s kind of falling apart. 

Apollo rolls his head back, eyelids fluttering and a crease through his brow. “Gods,” he groans, the heels of his boots digging into and skidding uselessly across the floor, knuckles white and bloodless as he hangs on to the table like he might disappear if he lets go. “I’m gonna come,” he warns, and it looks like he expects Starbuck to let go and fist him to finish instead, but Starbuck is having none of that, he grabs Apollo by the hips and forces him closer, deeper, wordlessly begging.

Apollo’s orgasm is spectacular. He cries out and bucks into Starbuck’s drooling mouth, pelvis twisting and pistoning while the rest of him collapses onto the table, muscles rippling with the force of it. Starbuck’s mouth is raw and torn when he finally pulls away to breathe, throat stinging from swallowing such a hot, huge load. He coughs, stunned, hands still braced on all the tempered and shuddering power of Apollo’s parted legs.

“Wow,” Apollo says eventually, voice muffled against the table top. “You’re, um. Pretty great at that.” 

“They don’t call me Starbuck, Lord of Fracking for nothing,” Starbuck answers, too aware of the reedy tremor in his voice, of how painfully hard he is, cock straining tight against his zipper. He wipes the shining slick of drool from his chin with his sleeve and notices his hands are shaking, notices he can still taste Apollo bitter and salty and dangerous on the back of his throat, all these terrible, devastating things. He stands, rising gracelessly on unsteady legs, fairly certain he will never be the same again after tonight, that he’s fracked up his life even more than he had before with this. 

“No one calls you that,” Apollo points out, grimacing as he tucks himself gingerly back into his slacks, fingers clumsy and fumbling over the buttons. 

Starbuck shrugs, “Eh, well.They should.” He adjusts the waistband of his pants, palming himself experimentally and wincing at the oversensitive pressure, how fracking turned on he is. He can feel Apollo’s gaze climbing all over his body, raw and confusing. He meets Apollo’s eyes, forcing a smile, and he knows it comes out kind of strained, kind of panicked, more of a wince than a real smile. 

Regardless, Apollo smiles back at him, either not noticing how hard Starbuck is from sucking him off, or graciously pretending to not notice. He tilts his head, then closes his eyes and lets out a well-fracked sigh. “Yeah. Maybe they should.” 

\---

Starbuck tries valiantly to resign himself to the possibility that blowing Apollo might very well be a one-time thing, but he still spends his days in limbo knotted up in anxiety, worrying about it. They carry on as usual, Apollo acting his self-righteous and obnoxiously likable self, Starbuck at his side, drinking with him, teasing him, shrugging sheepishly when he gets caught checking out girls. Nothing at all out of the ordinary, and Starbuck tries to accept that he might be jacking off each night to the still very vivid memory of his lips stretched tight around Apollo’s cock, but Apollo might have forgotten about the whole thing. Or if not forgotten, conveniently quarantined it once he gave it any amount of thought and realized what a bad idea it was. 

He decides he should at least _try_ and do the same when one night after they’re dismissed from duty, but then Apollo surprises him. They’re walking side by side to the locker room, sweaty from the cockpits of their vipers and towels slung around their necks when Apollo suddenly checks over his shoulder to make sure they are alone before leaning in too close to Starbuck’s ear, breath making his neck break out in gooseflesh because his body has been a reactive mess lately. 

“Hey,” Apollo says, gripping his helmet tight, eyes downcast. “I keep thinking about the other night. Can’t stop.” 

Starbuck’s stomach plunges through the floor, a wave of terrible heat washing over him, a reckless balloon of hope expanding inside his chest despite his better judgement. They keep walking, like nothing has happened, Apollo’s gaze fixed firm and unwavering ahead of him, Starbuck’s eyes huge and incredulous beneath raised brows. He tries to recover his voice, but it still comes out a little shrill when he asks “Do you? Keep thinking about it, I mean.” 

“Yes,” Apollo answers without looking at him. He strides ahead, boots squeaking on the floor and Starbuck has to struggle to keep up. 

“Um, what about it?” he asks, mouth dry. 

“Everything,” Apollo says, glancing only momentarily at Starbuck, his eyes hard and minty and stunning in their clarity. 

Starbuck’s mind races ahead of him, reckless and stupid. “Well. You know, it doesn’t have to be an, uh, incidental thing. I’d happy to repeat the scenario for you. Any time you wanted,” Starbuck explains as they make it to the locker room. It’s mostly empty; Jolly is throwing some stuff in his unit and humming, nodding jovially to them both but otherwise wrapped up in whatever he’s doing. Starbuck watches as Apollo shoves his helmet into his locker and peels his jacket and tunic off, revealing his chest in all its fine cut angles, golden brown skin shifting easily over understated muscle definition. Starbuck stares at the hem of his pant riding low beneath the weight of his belt, knowing what lies beneath, what it smells like, tastes like. 

Once Jolly is gone, Apollo shoots a glance at Starbuck, studies him as he towels sweat from his sternum and underarms. “You’re sure?” 

“Oh, very,” Starbuck admits, arms crossed in front of him while he leans against the wall of lockers, heel kicked up onto the low bench in front of him. He suddenly realizes he is just standing here staring at Apollo while he undresses, rather than undressing and toweling himself off like he should be. He hastily struggles out of his jacket, tearing his eyes from Apollo in his thin sheen of very lickable perspiration. “Captain,” he adds, grinning. 

The tension in Apollo’s face melts a little, the waves of fear radiating from his body fading, smoothing out. He’s scared of what’s happening between them, Starbuck can tell, he could taste it in his breath when he leaned into him in the hallway with his jaw set for confession. It eases the tangle of self-incriminating anxiety that’s been residing in Starbuck’s chest lately, to know he’s not the only one whose unsure of what’s happening. “Hey,” he says, reaching for Apollo and gently punching him on his toned shoulder. “It’s okay. I want to. Like, really want to.” 

“Yeah?” Apollo asks, smiling a tight-lipped smile that he keeps from meeting his eyes or shaping the rest of his face, cautious and guarded. 

“I swear on it,” Starbuck assures him, holding his hands out in front of him like this is a surrender. “We can go straight to your room right now if you want. Skip dinner for all I care.” 

Apollo laughs and it sounds broken with relief, echoing in the now empty locker room. “Alright,” he says, tugging a clean tunic on over his head, turning on his heel and leading the way. “Let’s go.” 

Starbuck cannot believe his good luck. 

\--

It grows into a routine of sorts. Usually at night in Apollo’s quarters, after a few drinks and a few rounds of chess. Apollo will get this look in his eye, his gaze growing dark and intense and hazy, the green of the oceans on Caprica, and all of the heat in Starbuck’s body will plummet and concentrate in his gut, chest contracting around the inevitable race of his heart. Then he’ll drop to his knees, crawl up between Apollo’s, and the rest of the night falls to pieces. 

Apollo always keeps his hands locked on the edge of the table or white-kuckled in his sheets on either side of him, like he’s worried he might hold Starbuck’s head steady and frack too deeply into his mouth if he doesn’t hold onto something. It drives Starbuck crazy because he wouldn't care; he’d love to choke on Apollo’s cock, he’d love to be raw and drooling and gagging around him, but he doesn’t push it. He’s half convinced Apollo is going to put an end to this thing any day now, and he’s not planning on making that happen any faster than is has to, so he’ll suffer through Apollo’s restraint.

He would be sure Apollo spent the whole time fantasizing about some girl if he didn’t watch Starbuck so intently, so he’s not exactly sure what it means that Apollo refuses to touch him. He doesn’t know how to encourage it, he doesn’t know how to tell Apollo there isn’t a single thing that’s off limits if he wants it, because that all seems like too much. Especially if this is just a two-buddies-helping-each-other-out scenario, which it very well might be. Whatever it is, it’s a good enough deal that he’s at least temporarily content to use his hands and mouth on Apollo while he grips furniture like he might fall apart if he doesn’t.

Starbuck is surprised, then, when over the sloppy wet sounds of his sucking and the blood pounding in his ears, he hears Apollo reflexively murmur, “You look so good,” quiet and blissed out like he didn’t actually mean to say it. 

Starbuck coughs, slides off of Apollo’s cock and lets it thud against his stomach wetly. “What?” he asks in an incredulous wheeze, pushing his hand up the ridges of muscle in Apollo’s stomach, higher still to the bronze ladder of his ribs. 

“Nothing,” Apollo tells him, though his cheeks color fiercely, always a dead giveaway. 

“No, what did you say,” Starbuck breathes, bending his head to lick into Apollo’s dark public hair, rubbing his nose into damp skin and inhaling because he can’t really control himself when he’s here. “Did you say I looked good? You like the way I look sucking your cock?” He asks, digging his fingers into the planes and divots of Apollo’s body, head buzzing he’s so turned on, such a mess over this. 

Apollo laughs weakly, lets his head fall back so he doesn’t have to look at Starbuck as he admits, “Yeah. I do. But I don’t mean--” he cuts himself off. 

Starbuck stares at Apollo’s hands, twisting desperately in the sheets of his bunk, like he’s holding himself back, like he’s trying not to push it too hard, either. A light goes off in his head. “Look, you can touch me,” he explains, heart hammering as he scrapes his nails down the outsides of Apollo’s thighs, feeling his cock twitch against his cheek. 

“Really?” Apollo asks, sounding skeptical as Starbuck nods furiously against him. 

“Yes,” Starbuck breathes, eyes wide. 

Apollo releases the bedspread at long last and tentatively brushes a broad palm down Starbuck’s forearm, towards his shoulder, his neck. His touch isn’t exploratory like Starbuck expected it to be, but deliberate, hungry. It makes his stomach flip over in yearning and he tilts into Apollo’s palm, letting a muted groan escape his lips. “I’ve been wanting to, I just didn’t know...” Apollo trails off, thumbing beneath Starbuck’s cheekbone.

“Frack,” Starbuck murmurs, rubbing his lips into Apollo’s abdomen, opening his mouth to chase a rivulet of sweat with his teeth. “You can do whatever you want to me.” 

Apollo’s cock throbs against him and he shifts so he’s sucking at the head again, shaking as Apollo palms up his neck, rough and hot and heavy as he cards his hands through Starbuck’s hair, working it to chaos, letting it snag in fistfuls at he pulls and manipulates him like he’s been starved for this. Starbuck stares up at him, at his eyes dark and explosive with pupil, his lower lip pulled tight between his teeth. It’s too much to look at so Starbuck lets his eyes slide closed and his mouth be used, thinking he could do this forever, stay here until his knees are bruised and bloody and his jaw seizes up, he doesn’t care, he doesn’t care. 

Without warning Apollo forces a finger into the corner of Starbuck’s mouth alongside his cock, sliding a calloused thumb across the slippery, swollen mess of his lower lip. Frack, Starbuck thinks wildly, releasing Apollo and instead sucking his index and middle fingers into his mouth, so deep down his throat he coughs around them, thrilled to be tasting this new stretch of his skin, rough and salty and metallic like engine grease. 

“Gods,” Apollo murmurs, awed, thumb rubbing the skin of Starbuck’s jaw red and raw, breath coming out hard and fast. 

Starbuck lashes his tongue at the crease in Apollo’s hand where his fingers meet his palm, jacking him off clumsy and fast, so strung out on sensation he’s beyond caring how desperate he looks. Apollo keeps rubbing his free hand all over him, in his hair, across his shoulder blades, around his throat, whatever he can reach until he seizes up in Starbuck’s palm and comes, digging his fingers into Starbuck’s bicep with bruising force while it happens. 

Then, he flops messily back onto the bed, heaving and golden and painted in his own come, and Starbuck knows the image he’s going to be holding stark and perfect in his mind when be brings himself off in his own bunk tonight. He puts his face in his hands, sticky and wet with Apollo, and tries to breathe, knowing full well he’s in too deep, in way, way over his head. 

\---

Starbuck starts noticing things, things he wishes he didn’t notice. Whatever is going on with Apollo would be easier, less distracting and life-ruining and all that that if he could be certain it didn’t mean anything. If it was clear to him that Apollo was just using him as a comforting, familiar mouth to come inside in favor of wasting time chasing skirts or something. If he’s just convenient, just the best fracking wingman of all time. Then maybe he could go back to being a whole person. Maybe he could stop feeling delirious and confused all the time, and instead just commit to the grieving process.

But Apollo makes it _impossible_ to know for sure. Starbuck will convince himself that he’s hooked on someone incapable of returning his feelings and needs to be satisfied with what he _does_ have, and then Apollo catch his eye across the Pyramid table in the rejuvenation room and smile devastatingly, sincere and suggestive and private all at once and Starbuck is reeling again, wondering. 

It happens all the time. They’ll be in the middle of a Triad match and Apollo will grip Starbuck’s hair when no one’s looking, tug his head back for a second and breathe down his neck, then release him to jog across the court and receive a pass like nothing happened, Starbuck left shaking and stricken and off his game. Apollo will invite him over after duty, nonchalantly with a twinkle in his eye, his head cocked and his tongue pressing into the inside of his cheek. Apollo will let his gaze rest for a few centons too long on the curve of Starbuck’s lower back when they’re changing in the locker room. Apollo will sometimes get quiet after he comes, looking at Starbuck imploringly, like he wants him to stay, like he wants to make him feel as good as Starbuck just made _him_ feel, but doesn’t know how. 

Apollo does _all sorts of things_ which force Starbuck to question his assumption that Apollo can’t possibly want him with the same pathetic, fracked up want. Which force him to question his own convenience. 

“You could ask her about it,” Boomer tells him when he presents his dilemma, craftily inventing a name so no one is suspicious of those Mid-Triad gropes which can’t be as discreet as Apollo seems to think they are. “You know, this might be a novel idea for you, but most folks talk about fracking after they’ve done it a few times with the same person. It’s called being in a relationship.”

“Oh come on,” Starbuck snaps, waving his cigar in the air in a giant, chaotic motion, painting an S of smoke in its wake. “We’re not in a _relationship_ , Boom. I know that much.” 

“Maybe you think that, but you have no idea what she thinks, because you _haven’t asked her_. Figure it out. Stop making it hard for yourself with all this guesswork.” 

_But we haven’t even kissed_ , Starbuck think, but does not say, seeing it is something Boomer absolutely cannot know, whether or not the subject of their discussion some girl or their Strike Captain. He inhales deeply before blowing out a tremendous billow of smoke with a cough. “I dunno. She’s kind of tightlipped, kind of serious. She might slug me if I start talking about _feelings_ , I’m not sure.” 

“Sounds like a keeper,” Boomer responds dryly. 

_You have no idea,_ Starbuck thinks. 

Though he can’t really imagine just _talking_ to Apollo about the dynamic they’ve been cultivating, Starbuck is at least partially aware that Boomer’s advice is probably something he should take to heart. He used to think he was capable of letting this carry on and develop in any way it might, riding it out and rolling with the punches. He used to think he was capable of just being Apollo’s live, convenient, cure for blue-balls, setting his feelings aside long enough to get at least a fraction of what he wants. But now he’s pretty sure it might kill him, especially if Apollo keeps doing confusing, misleading, heartbreaking things that frack with his head, that make him feel like he has probably made one hundred girls and ten guys feel in the past. 

The truth is, Starbuck fracks a lot of people and makes sure he has a million things going for him at once so that if one of them burns out or gets too serious, he has a dozen warm bodies to cushion his fall. Starbuck might love them and leave them, but it’s only because he is so fracking afraid of loving and being left that he doesn’t know how to go about things any other way. If he’s learned anything in life, it’s that he things he loves always leave in the end, and the best way to protect himself from that reality is to just _not love_ things. 

Apollo _used to be_ the safe, easy exception to that philosophy. Starbuck could live his life half in love with Apollo because he was unreachable, unswallowable. Too perfect and too remote, destined for glory and money and fame just like his father, things that Starbuck would never be able to access, things that had never been his. Starbuck was an orphan and a gambler and a cad, everyone’s favorite warrior to shake their head at and wonder, _how in Hades did he get here?_ And Apollo, Apollo was _Adama’s_ son. Most ideal person to fall for and lust after uselessly, because it would never, _could_ never go anywhere. 

Starbuck forgot the appeal of that somewhere along the way. He’d stumbled half drunk through too many yahrens of wanting fruitlessly, what was he _supposed_ to do when Apollo fell into his lap? He was far too out of practice to even think of self preserving. He nearly died in his viper every other day, he couldn’t fathom saying no to one casual blowjob. But now here he is, falling apart. Realizing he could do it once, twice, ten times. But not every day, not without knowing for sure what it means. 

He decides he’s going to come clean with Apollo tonight. Or at least feel the situation out, test the waters. But now that he’s here, in his usual place across the table from Apollo with an inch of ambrosa in his glass and a half-finished chess game between them, he’s second guessing himself. Wondering what’s so bad about letting Apollo frack his mouth to ruin every other night, wondering why he’s so gods damned incapable of stomaching that he might not be everything to Apollo. He’s still his best friend and he’s still getting fracked, what more could a guy want? 

He swigs from his glass and studies Apollo’s mouth, the terrible, perfect shape of it, bowed and plush and pink. A cocksucking set of lips if he ever saw one, or at least the kind of mouth you bite open, lips you nip at and chew on until their swollen and shining. And there, that’s what’s so bad about this. He doesn’t just want Apollo’s cock in his mouth, he wants _all_ of him. He wants to kiss him, hard and deep with teeth and tongue, slow and sloppy and morning-soft. There is nothing he doesn’t want from Apollo, and there’s the problem. 

“What are you thinking about?” Apollo asks him, killing one of his pawns with a knight and snatching it from the table with fingers Starbuck has choked on. His gaze flickers across Starbuck’s face, concerned lines framing his mouth. 

“You,” Starbuck admits, thinking it’s at least a start. He watches Apollo set down the pawn carefully, jaw set tight. “Your mouth, specifically,” he adds, shrugging like this is something casual, easy, nonchalant. Duty rosters or new cadets in training. 

“ _My_ mouth?” Apollo asks, like Starbuck is the only one in the room with a mouth. So slow and dense sometimes, and Starbuck can feel his chest tightening up in exasperation, can feel himself hurtling towards the self-destructive corner of his brain. He pulls a cigar out of the crushed box in his pocket and jams it between his teeth, keeps it unlit while he chews on it, just needing something to do, something to touch while Apollo puzzles through this thing like it’s astrophysics. “What about it?” he finally asks again, voice cautious, tongue flicking out self-consciously to sweep across the lower lip in question. 

Starbuck rolls his eyes. “Frack, Apollo. What do you think? It’s a nice mouth. Fracking gorgeous, I spend so much time staring at it you’d think a smart commander’s son like you would have figured it out by now,” he growls through his teeth, around the rolling papers in his mouth. Apollo stares at him, dumbstruck, eyes so wide and so terribly green Starbuck wants to break something. “Look,” Starbuck interjects before Apollo can defend himself, heart pounding as he realizes what he sounds like, how demanding and unfair and out of bounds. “I don’t mean you gotta reciprocate what I do to you, I don’t care about that, I’d never _force_ you to do something you didn’t want,” he says in a rush, stumbling over his words. “I just mean...frack. Just wanna know what you want from me, Apollo.” 

Apollo says, “Hmm,” kneading his brow with his thumb, mashing the crease through it decidedly as though Starbuck has just given him a headache. 

Starbuck can’t believe it, he’s just slammed his dumb bleeding heart out into the middle of their chess game, revealed that he actually _does_ have feelings like every other human in the world, and Apollo’s response was _hmm._ He stands, throwing his arms up into the air, turning his back to Apollo, infuriating rich Caprican boy with his illustrious military family, who can’t even tell when his best friend _basically_ just confessed to yahrens of loving him. “Unfrackingbelievable,” he mumbles, trying to light his cigar with shaking hands before giving up and tossing it to the table instead. It rolls to the ground silently. 

“Gods,” Apollo mumbles behind him, accompanied by the scrape of his chair on the floor and the rustling sound of him sitting up. He strides to Starbuck, grabs him by the shoulder, and spins him around before he slams him into the door. “What do _you_ want from _me?_ That’s what I wanna know, Starbuck. Because I don’t know what the frack we’re doing anymore, what games you’re playing with me,” His breath is hot on Starbuck’s lips, making his head spin and his knees threaten to buckle against the solid heat of Apollo’s body pressed flush and hard against him. 

“What do I want from you?!” He wheezes, panic edging into his voice. “Haven’t I made that clear, haven’t I--” 

“You want me to blow you?” Apollo grinds out, eyes half-lidded and fiery and he lets his brow nod in towards Starbuck’s, grinding their foreheads together so their lips are inches apart. “Is that what you want? You want me to suck your cock?” 

“Frack,” Starbuck hisses, mortifyingly hard in his uniform slacks at the idea, from the insistent, shifting pressure of Apollo’s thigh jammed between his own. “Yeah. Yeah _of course_ I do, but only if you want to. Only if you want me. I gotta know if you want me.” 

Apollo slides his palms down Starbuck’s arms, grips each of his wrists in huge rough hands and pins them against the door, above both their heads. He stands like that for a long time, rocking with slow, stilted bucks against Starbuck’s hips, grinding his forearms to dust in his bruising grip, breath damp and labored on Starbuck’s mouth. “I want you so fracking bad it scares me,” he murmurs eventually, thumb inching almost tenderly into Starbuck’s palm, which is tingling and nearly numb in its bloodlessness. “But I can’t be just one of your fracks. I swore I’d never let myself, that if I was your friend I’d stay stay way, I wouldn’t turn into one of the million people all uselessly in love with you. But here I am.” 

Starbuck’s heart kind of stops. “Oh,” he says, which is not that much better than _hmm_ , but he forgot how to talk, forgot every version of the speech he had planned to use tonight. His throat clicks as he swallows, and Apollo’s eyes flicker down to his lips. 

“Pretty stupid, huh?” Apollo admits in a hush, grip contracting on Starbuck’s wrist and that’s it. That’s all he can take, that’s the end of his self-preservative streak, right there. Starbuck twists one hand desperately out of Apollo’s, tangles it in the back of his hair, and drags their mouths together at long last. 

Apollo’s lips part around a groan and he licks up into Starbuck for a split second, their teeth colliding to the taste of blood, maybe, and then he’s wrenching away, slamming Starbuck back into the wall. “No,” he huffs, eyes closed, face a wreck of color and wavering restraint. “Letting you suck me off is one thing but kissing, that’s different, that’s a whole--”

“Frack!” Starbuck growls, laughter stuttering out of him wild and desperate as he bucks and writhes, trying to free himself enough he can touch Apollo properly, seal their mouths again, taste him again like he’s been dying to. “Apollo, I’ve been so fracking in love with you for _yahrens_ and you can’t even _tell_ ,” he struggles out, and Apollo is staring at him hard. Scrutinizing him for any sign that he’s joking, playing him, and it’s _so fracking frustrating_ how sincere and paranoid and humorless he is Starbuck is centons away from sobbing over it. 

His grip weakens for a moment and Starbuck takes advantage of it, grabbing him and pulling him in, capturing his mouth in a wet graceless kiss, biting his lower lip, carding his hands through the length of his hair and holding him fast. Though Apollo has been doing a spectacular job of holding out on Starbuck until now, he crumbles. Shoves Starbuck up agains the door with both fists in his jacket, choking him with tongue, groaning into his mouth like he’s just been broken open. 

They stagger around the room, nearly upending a desk and the table with the chess game on top of it, sending a few pawns and a rook flying onto the floor beside Starbuck’s discarded cigar. Apollo is heavy and clumsy like someone who has never kissed standing up in his life, and Starbuck struggles hard as he steers him to the bed, banging his knees and hip up terrifically in the process. But he doesn’t care, he can’t even _begin_ to when he’s finally, _fracking finally_ kissing Apollo. 

They thump down onto Apollo’s neatly made bunk in a tangle of limbs, breath noisy and labored as Starbuck drags desperate nails everywhere he can reach, palming up under Apollo’s untucked tunic and into the sleeves of his jacket. They break apart long enough for Starbuck to suck in a few ragged lungfuls of air, gaze flickering all over Apollo’s body, his uniform in disarray, his perfect mouth bitten and swollen and pink _finally_. “Hey,” he says stupidly, straddling Apollo’s hips, thrusting messily against him with what is probably the most insane smile plastered across his face. “You know when I said you could do whatever you wanted to me, I meant it.” 

Apollo shakes his head then shrugs underneath him, chest heaving with wild, shallow breaths. “Yeah, but I couldn’t be sure,” he gasps, sliding his hands up Starbuck’s ribs, pulling at the fabric of his tunic to indicate he wants it off. “People like me never know about people like you, if you say the same things to everyone. Every time you made me think you might actually want more, I had to remind myself, this is what he does, this is why everyone loves him. Had to tell myself I was no different” 

Starbuck struggles out of his jacket and belt then pulls his tunic over his head inelegantly. He hears Apollo hiss under him, groaning under his breath as he paws roughly across his chest, sternum, back. “Well. You were. Different, I mean.” He mumbles before collapsing against Apollo and into the cage of his arms, mouthing up his neck, across his jaw and back to his mouth, where he kisses him like he’s drinking, like he’s drowning. 

“I had to be careful, try not to fall in too deep and get hurt, you know?” Apollo explains further as they part, lips ghosting against Starbuck’s in the liminal space between them. 

A laugh huffs out of Starbuck. “Yeah, trust me. I know. I’ve been trying not to get hurt, too. But I’m not very good at it.” Then they’re kissing again, rough and fast and wet, Apollo sucking Starbuck’s tongue into his mouth and grinding against him, driving a thick thigh between his legs to feel him where he’s hard and straining against his pants. 

“I’m not gonna hurt you though,” Apollo promises, palming up Starbucks’s arms, grabbing for fistfuls of him. Starbuck shakes his head, kind of in awe, kind of senseless about this whole thing. And really, he doesn’t care. Apollo is probably gonna hurt him, it’s what people do to each other, to the ones they love. But he’s always been reckless and hades-bound anyway, he’s always thrown himself headfirst into the kinds of things that could kill him. _Bring it on_ , he thinks, ceding to the tide of Apollo’s skin slicking against his. _bloody or not, bring it all on_. 

He lets himself be rolled onto his back, lets Apollo chew and scratch and bruise his way down his chest and to the golden trail of hair which disappears beneath the waistband of his uniform. Mind a frantic buzz of static and longing as he writhes under Apollo’s mouth. Eventually he tilts his head up to look at Starbuck, brows raised. “I really, really badly want to suck you off, but I, unlike you, have never done this before.” 

“It’s easier than flying a viper, I promise,” Starbuck teases, hand in Apollo’s hair, eyes half lidded in unguarded want. 

Apollo smiles with teeth, tugs open the buttons on Starbuck’s pants and buries his face in the newly exposed skin, inhaling deeply, tongue swirling messily over heated flesh. Starbuck arches off the mattress, spine curling, stomach lurching, thinking this might be the best thing that’s ever happened to him.“I don’t know what I’m doing,” Apollo warns, helping Starbuck wiggle out of his pants. 

“Psh. But you were schooled in the art of cocksucking by Starbuck, Lord of Fracking, right? Can’t be that bad--” he cuts himself off with a sharp intake of breath as Apollo encircles a hand around him, fingers warm and rough and perfect as he jerks his length experimentally. “Gods,” he mumbles, edging him on. 

Apollo is making these breathy, lost, awed noises, his forehead pressed to the jut of Starbuck’s hip while he watches himself touch him, thrusting mindlessly into the mattress as he does it, messy, stuttering motions of his hips. Starbuck stares, wondering how he managed to _not notice_ how badly Apollo wanted this, how he could so blatantly misread all his hesitance.   
Apollo shifts down a few inches and licks sloppily up the shaft before closing his mouth over the head, a terrible, mind-blowing heat that obliterates anything else Starbuck could have been thinking about, the purity of it whiting out his vision, making him twist up off the mattress and into Apollo’s mouth. “Frack,” he hisses, twisting his hands in the bedspread. 

“Good?” Apollo murmurs, pulling away just enough that his lips are touching Starbuck but nothing else, swollen and soft and agonizing. 

“Perfect,” Starbuck wrenches out, teeth grinding as Apollo resumes, groaning around him like this is the answer to all his prayers, what he’s been wanting, what he’s been dreaming about. 

It’s an embarrassing amount of time before Starbuck is shooting his load, one hand snagging a rough fistful of Apollo’s hair as he empties himself, other hand between his own teeth to keep himself from alerting the whole ship to his whereabouts. Apollo tries to swallow but ends up half-choking a mouthful back onto Starbuck’s still twitching cock, eyes streaming as he licks it up anyway, palms splayed on the heaving expanse of Starbuck’s chest. 

“Wow,” Starbuck says eventually, still pretty dizzy and starry eyed as Apollo crawls up beside him, sweat sticky and visibly pleased with himself. “My lessons paid off. Should have charged for them.” 

“Don’t joke,” Apollo admonishes before clearing his throat noisily, voice hoarse. “Still half-afraid this is all one big game to you.” 

Starbuck rolls over, nosing against Apollo’s lips blindly, gaze soft. “Hey, stop. You know me. You know I frack people, but I don’t frack with people. Especially not my wingman. This is the real deal, buddy.” 

Apollo pushes a shaking hand through Starbuck’s hair, pulling it away from his eyes so he can study them, fitting their bodies together more closely so Starbuck can feel hot hard and yearning he still is. “Yeah? I gotta believe Starbuck Lord of Fracking actually _does_ the real deal thing?” 

“You better believe it. It’s a one time special and you got the lucky draw, how about that?” Starbuck tells him, face glowing with a wide grin. “Captain Apollo, the one and only real deal.” 

“Gods,” Apollo says, kissing him with lips still so raw and bruised, eyes hazy with want. “You’re serious.” 

“You bet,” Starbuck assures him, shoving him onto his back and spreading him out, bronze and half-clothed and rucked up for the taking. “So,” Starbuck asks, eyes wide. “How bout I blow you?” 

Apollo grins, and nods. 

\---


End file.
